What You Do When You Wake Up

Mattie is my profound thinker. Her ability to ever so innocently insert deeper meanings into simplicity never ceases to amaze me. Her mind usually works more like her daddy’s in its ability to think abstractly, and this often leaves me in giggling amazement.

Our conversation today (out of NOWHERE):
Mattie: “Mommy, how do you fall in love?”
Me: L-o-n-g p-a-u-s-e… I shake my head for a moment. “Mattie,” I sigh… …Still searching for the words to explain such a concept to a 5 year old… “Well… You meet someone, and you become friends, and you start to like them, and you get to know them really good, and you spend lots of time together, and then after a long time you might fall in love with them and get married!” Simple enough for a 5 year old, but complex enough that she feels that she has received an adequate answer, I am hoping…

Mattie: “So, what do you do when you wake up?!”
I am taken aback by the statement, funny as it is, how true is it?! Where it came from I have no clue. My mind races back and forth between the irony of the statement and where she came up with the idea that you are a sleep when you fall in love from my answer…

My response was “You are usually awake when you fall in love…” And the response worked. But as I got ready for bed my mind went back to our innocent conversation. Hind sight is always 20/20. And this fact usually leaves me frustrated. *Hold that thought* So given the chance to re-respond, and given the opportunity to be having this conversation with her another twelve years from now, I would have said something like this…

“You wake up. And he’ll wake up too. And there will be days where you both think ‘what have I done?’ But you stick it out, cause that’s what you vowed to God and each other to do. And the promise for happiness wasn’t anywhere in those vows. It was ‘for better or worse,’ and worse will come. And it will go too. And happiness will do the same. Luckily, although we call it “falling” in love, it’s really not falling at all.

Love is a choice- it’s not a feeling. It’s not the warm fuzzys that make you smile every time you think about him. It’s an action that you chose to do. If someone says that they “fell out of love,” don’t be fooled into thinking it “just happened,” they made the decision that it was too much work to continue to love the imperfect person they chose and are now through. But let me tell you, the best years of your life will be the ones where you learn to stop focusing on yourself. This life is not about ‘me,’ despite what our culture leads us to believe. We are part of something greater, and God cares far more about our character than our comfort. And if one thing is for sure, He will allow you to go through uncomfortable times. But it’s to build you and grow you both as individuals and together as a couple. If you never knew pain, you would never know to pray for comfort, if you never knew hard times, you would never know to pray for provision. So when you wake up, you pray. You stick it out, because you said that you would. And excuses aren’t acceptable. You fell in love with an imperfect person, and they did the same. Hurt will come. Heartaches happen. Hard times are a part of life. But you cling to each other and God. You don’t run from issues or problems. You face them head on together. You are a team, and divorce really is a 4-letter word. Whatever you do, don’t look to society for advice or approval. They don’t have the same standards that we are held too. And I say this not at all because I am perfect, but because I know from experience. Things that are good are worth fighting for, and you just may have to do that at some point. So, just know baby girl, when you wake up God has your path ready for you with all the grace and provision you will need, and we will always have your back and will be behind you every step of your journey.”

So back to my *hold that thought* moment… Hind sight is always 20/20, but I was actually allowed to get this 20/20 vision a few years early. For now my explanation of falling in love worked for my child who still believes in fairy tales, but when we revisit this topic later in her life, I’ll be slightly more prepared with what to tell her about what to do when you “wake up” after falling in love.

- By Mikki Smith